Misconceptions
by Lucy Lupin
Summary: Five anonymous couples, in chronological order from the Trio's fifth year through to postHogwarts, and whose perceptions of each other change over time. Guess who's who. Written prior to Deathly Hallows


**Misconceptions**

Set: Various  
Rating: Ranging from PG to PG-13  
Pairing: Five different pairings, four interhouse.  
Genre: General/drama/romance  
Disclaimer: I own nothing. My muses, however, pwn me.

Summary: Five anonymous couples, in chronological order from the Trio's fifth year through to post-Hogwarts. Guess who's who.

Author's Notes: With thanks to **maniacalmuse** who inspired these with her wonderful anonymous ficlets, and **zeft**, **celebren** and other players from the game **hogwarts blogs** for the aid of their muses. _**NB: **__Written prior to __Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_.

**One - 273 words**

Divide and conquer. That was the rule. Apparently even the biggest lout was significantly more approachable when separated from the mob and relieved of the obligation to preserve his reputation and so make an arse of himself in front of all his little Quidditch friends.

So she'd decided to catch him alone after his training, when he lingered to strap the Bludgers and the rest of the balls into their storage box, his fingers working with deft practice on the fastenings. She'd stood beneath the Quidditch stands until the last of his team-mates filed away and tried not to let her nerves get to her. Or at least try not to let them show.

She had said many things to him. About how he had bodychecked her when they were both off the Quaffle. About how he had squeezed her hand far too tight when shaking it before the match. About how he was most unnecessarily the biggest git in the school, a role he had taken on with gusto after Flint had left.

And after she had said these, and other things, she had expected him to say a few things back. Like how she should have stayed up in the stands with the other little girls. Like how her braids looked like the Giant Squid had leapt from its pool and attached itself to her head. Like how she insisted on picking keepers who didn't know one end of a goalpost from another.

But what she _hadn't_ expected him to say was "I'm sorry." And then touch her arm as he left the grounds, hefting the box up onto his shoulder.

**Two - 497 words**

All through her two NEWT years she'd been accustomed to the is-she-really-going-out-with-him looks. And _he'd_ certainly added his voice to the clamour. One night after a victory of his, he'd staggered into her and slurred that it was a shame such a hot arse was wasted on one of the untouchables of _his_ world. Even in his inebriation his choice and emphasis of that possessive had been unmistakably deliberate.

She'd slapped him for that.

After graduation she had fallen out of touch with him (not that she had tried to keep _in_ touch). She hadn't with her ex either, but for different reasons. So it was with some surprise that when joining the Auror training program after a thankless year with the Ministry she saw his name as one of the enlistees.

He had worked hard. They both had. But while she was outstanding in the theoretical component, particularly when it came to intelligence, he had a knack with wandwork, particularly the more cynical hexes – and had passed his examinations a full six months ahead. As she watched him receive his badge from Rufus Scrimgeour, she remembered that during his second round of NEWTs, when he wasn't busy snarking he had actually applied himself. She thought about what it must have taken to end up with an acceptable batch of results – but not for an Auror – and then go through the humiliation of a repeated year to get to where he wanted. But she wasn't ready to change her mind about him.

As trainees he'd still been an arse, but in a non-blood biased way. When asked about it by a bemused colleague, he'd responded, "I don't discriminate. You all naff me off equally." Their few encounters had been polite but distant, brief. Consequently when the guild had decided she was up to it and transferred her to their Hogwarts batch and he had offered her the spare room in his village apartment, she'd been surprised and a little suspicious. But exhausted from flooing back and forth to London, she had also accepted.

Their first weeks together were hardly heaven sent. One night after a slew of eighteen hour days he and that low-level crook crony of his she'd apprehended nabbing silverware once had kept her awake – driving her to lose her temper and then near to tears. Slytherin. Quidditch. Boozing. That was what she associated with him, she thought angrily as she struggled to sleep. And she wasn't going to change her mind anytime soon.

She thought that with the hangover he'd most likely given himself he'd sleep until noon. So she didn't expect to hear him moving about when she got up to take a shower before her dawn shift. She was downright shocked when she got out, yawning and groggily towel-drying her hair, to come face-to-face with a cooked and generous breakfast accompanied by a full pot of coffee and a flower in one glass.

Perhaps it was time to change her mind.

**Three - 455 words**

For all of his seventeen years he'd known what to do. He, a member of one of his house's oldest families (in fact, a direct descendent of its _founding_ family), was going to follow in his father's footsteps and work his way up in the Ministry of Magic and become a judge.

He imagined many things. Winning the Quidditch Cup as the new captain, and then the House Cup on top of that. Leaving Hogwarts with nothing else than an "E" and then taking the Ministry by storm in the briefest amount of time as possible. Buying a nice manor just outside of London and settling down with a nice girl from a good, old-money family. With good, old-money values and good, old-money common sense.

He'd never imagined that of all things, he'd be spending a Hogsmeade weekend on a bridge in the heights of the castle with the school lunatic.

True, her idiosyncrasies had at first irritated him greatly. She doggedly insisted on all sorts of claptrap, proclaiming, "But how can you know that Wrackspurts don't exist if you've never even _seen_ one? They're invisible, you know." Then she would continue by painstakingly explaining that _of course_ they were real because one felt the effects of them all the time, like how pathological liar Potter would always be infected by one whenever the girl Weasley walked into the room. Lately she conceded on the point that Potter had been dumbstruck for other reasons, but still maintained in the existence of yet another pet creature.

Then, as he'd gotten more used to her, it ceased to be annoying. Well, it was still annoying, but only because it _wasn't_ annoying. And he couldn't figure out why. And that was annoying. But it started to become cute. Calming even, as he'd just tune out all his problems and listen to her enunciate on about Crumpled Horn Snorkacks and Nargles.

And then he'd get annoyed because it shouldn't have had that effect on him. What effect exactly?

It took him much longer to figure that out. In fact, he was still figuring it out. That was why he was here.

"I don't get you," he was saying, waving his hands in the air with exasperation. She meanwhile calmly watched, nestled in the folds of his black cloak edged with yellow. "I don't get you at all. And I'd like to. And it's brassing me off royally."

"There aren't many who do." She gave him that mysterious yet somehow open smile and reached over to take his hand. "But that means there's all the more to discover about me, you know. After all, it's only been two weeks."

And that, he thought, surmised it perfectly. His irritation faded away.

**Four - 477 words**

They were the pretty ones. Exceptionally so. But because her sister had been sorted into Ravenclaw and she into Gryffindor, her sister was the smart one and she wasn't. And because she was beautiful, that also made her dumb. Over the years she grew tired of trying to explain to snotty purebloods and confused half-bloods the concept of identical DNA and that she was as smart as her sister, she just applied it to different things. So she learned to give up. It was less effort just to giggle in the common room with her best friend and discuss what others did and thought rather than think about what her own opinions were.

And over the years, her own experiences installed in her the knowledge that getting more attention than most other girls didn't mean that it was the right kind of attention, and that the average boy could be trusted as far as she could throw him without the aid of a hex. It was just safer to sit back behind the girly mask of lip gloss and eyeliner and gossip and hide while inside her real self curled up.

For six years it developed then continued like this, and showed little sign of abating. But the year she was due to take her NEWTs, she met someone who knew what it was like to be judged by what you showed to the outside world.

He had been a year ahead of her sister in Ravenclaw and was at Hogwarts to assist Slughorn in potion brewing. She had gone to see him for a headache remedy after a falling out with Madam Pomfrey had made her temporarily swear off the school nurse. He had been hesitant about giving her the remedy, not yet being an accredited Apothecary. She had felt touched by this show of scruples, and guilty, and so had offered to stay in the abandoned Potions classroom until the potion took affect. He had accepted. Their fingers had brushed as she had taken the vial.

True, he was no longer a student, but they were only six months apart and he never treated her like a silly schoolgirl. And for her part she found a strangely supportive ear, someone who would listen to her in all seriousness and encourage her to develop thoughts of her own. In turn she learned there was more to him than the tomfoolery he presented to others, and by and by both their masks, the ditzy and the relentlessly jovial, slipped. To the point where they had been discovered by a student returning for a missing textbook, conversing through much less reserved and sedate means to previously on a tabletop. She was surprised when there was little reaction from McGonagall or any of the other teachers. Apparently it had been accepted as a given, even before it had happened.

**Five - 396 words**

She and her two best friends had been inseparable at Hogwarts. There had always been a sort of halo around them; they had seemed to get out of the most unimaginable dangers on a day-to-day basis, and to just take it in stride with day-to-day student life. But even then he should have realised that not everyone would get out alive, even from those three.

The other two were both killed. She was left with scars, and not just in a figurative sense. The right side had won, but to her it probably made little difference.

These days they worked together in the same office, he and she. Trying to smoothen over relations with the Muggles that were already strained prior the war, and that were now close to the point of eruption. It was summer when he first found her seated at the previously empty desk adjacent to his own. The other witches wore short-sleeved robes with necklines as low as the dress code would allow. She didn't.

To him the idea that her scars were repulsive was unthinkable. He couldn't imagine anything on her, anything that was a part of her bare flesh, being less than beautiful. He had realised during their second month as colleagues why this was. So as she bent her beautiful swanlike neck – the one part of her body she still revealed - over scroll after scroll of policy, he covertly sketched. And sketched. Until one day she looked over and saw what he was doing. And he, summoning up the courage that they shared within their house, asked her to sit for him.

At first she agreed to a head portrait. And a head portrait only. Over time, though gentle reassuring, he managed to get her to reveal part of her arms and her upper décolletage. Then in time, more. When he asked to sketch her bare back, she protested. "But I'm ugly," she said, blinking back tears.

"No you're not," he said, and kissed her. It was only after she'd removed the rest of her clothing and looked up into his eyes, expecting to see revulsion and finding only love instead, that she kissed him back.

As they lay in bed afterwards, the sunlight rippling over her pinkish skin, she took his hand and traced the scars. "At least they only exist on the outside now," she said.

_The End._


End file.
